Abstract [en]

The building sector within both the EU and Sweden accounts for about 40% of total energy use. It is therefore important to introduce energy efficiency measures in this sector in order to meet the national implementation of the Building Performance Directive. Retrofits that result in improved energy performance are important in order to meet national energy targets, but the impact on the indoor environment has to be considered. Properly chosen energy efficiency measures may affect the indoor environment positively. One retrofitted multi-family building, located in the city of Linkoping, Sweden, was chosen as the study object. The building represents a common type of construction in Sweden. This study presents an evaluation of both the indoor environment and energy use of the retrofitted building in comparison with a similar non-retrofitted building from the same area. The results show that the building has potential to reach a 39% reduction of space heating demand. The indoor environment has been improved compared to the non-retrofitted building. Adding external blinds from 15 May to 15 September between 10am-12pm on the east side and 12pm-3pm on the west side seems to be the best option for improving the indoor climate during summer. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract [en]

In Sweden, buildings are responsible for about 40 % of total energy use and about 10 % of total CO2 emissions Today more than 60 % of existing Swedish residential buildings are over 40 years old and are in need of major renovation. In addition, 15 % of all multi-family buildings and 27 % of all single-family houses were built before 1945. The increased energy use and threat from CO2 emissions of the building sector create a need for energy efficiency. The important role that renovation of residential buildings will play in reducing the total energy used by the Swedish building sector as well as in reducing primary energy use and CO2 emissions on both the national and global levels has been the impetus for the studies included in this thesis.

The aim of the current research is to develop a methodology from a system perspective which can be used to analyze the energy use, optimal life cycle cost (LCC), energy efficiency measure (EEM) package, indoor environment, CO2 emissions, and primary energy use of a building or a community during major renovation. The developed methodology accomplished at three different levels, i.e. building level, cluster level and district level. The methodology considers both energy efficiency and economic viability during building renovation and will also play an important role in overall urban planning. The studied buildings include both non-listed and listed residential buildings and the tools used include building energy simulation (BES), survey, technical measurements, LCC optimization and building categorization.

The results show that the combination of BES, technical measurements and surveys provides a holistic approach for evaluation of energy use and indoor environment of the studied residential buildings. The results from the current study also show that the 2020 energy target, i.e., reduction of energy use by 20 %, for the building sector can be achieved by all the studied building types and that the total LCC of these buildings are below the cost-optimal point. In comparison, the 2050 energy target, i.e., reduction of energy use by 50 %, for the building sector may be achieved by the non-listed buildings, but when the constraints relevant to listed buildings are added the cost-optimality changes as some EEMs in direct conflict with the building’s heritage value may not be implemented.

The investigation of primary energy use and CO2 emissions by the residential buildings show that the higher the energy saving, the lower the primary energy use becomes, and vice versa. With the same energy saving, the heating system with higher primary energy factor results in higher primary energy use. From a CO2 emissions point of view, EEM packages proposed to help buildings connected to a CHP based district heating system, to reduce the energy use or LCC are not consistently effective. Since these EEM packages will reduce district heating demand, the electricity produced in the CHP plant will also decrease. When the biomass is considered a limited resource, measures such as investment in a biofuel boiler are not favourable from the CO2 emissions point of view. The current study has also shown that combining building categorization method and LCC optimization method will help the community to reduce its energy use, primary energy use and CO2 emissions in a systematic and strategic way.